Com­ment­ing on the emer­gency loans, CDB Pres­i­dent Dr William War­ren Smith said: “The pro­vi­sion of sup­port to the sev­en coun­tries to re­spond to COVID-19 and keep crit­i­cal gov­ern­ment ser­vices and op­er­a­tions run­ning is ur­gent to halt the eco­nom­ic de­cline and min­imise so­cial hard­ship, while giv­ing fo­cused at­ten­tion to the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple.”

The De­vel­op­ment Bank high­light­ed that gross do­mes­tic prod­uct will de­cline in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da (1.5 per cent), Be­lize (5.4 per cent), Do­mini­ca (2.9 per cent), Grena­da (10 per cent), St Lu­cia (9.1 per cent), and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines (4.8 per cent).

It al­so not­ed that Suri­name, which is heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on gold pro­duc­tion and ex­port, was al­so se­vere­ly hit and the econ­o­my al­most brought to a com­plete stand­still.

The CDB ex­pressed that it ex­pects that the so­cial im­pacts of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic would be sig­nif­i­cant, stem­ming from an in­crease in un­em­ploy­ment, and loss of in­come and liveli­hoods, as well as sub­stan­tial dis­rup­tions of so­cial ser­vices, with women, fe­male heads of house­holds and chil­dren, per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, in­dige­nous peo­ples, and mi­grants as the most vul­ner­a­ble groups.

The CDB’s re­sponse to COVID-19 to date tops US$200 mil­lion, with US$140 mil­lion that can be used by the bank’s bor­row­ing mem­ber coun­tries to tack­le the fall­out of the pan­dem­ic as well as any oth­er shocks to their econ­o­my and US$3 mil­lion for the pur­chase of per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment.